


Grace

by niqaeli



Category: The Losers, The Losers (2010)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-29 15:56:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niqaeli/pseuds/niqaeli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Infant, purse, go-bag, and a handful of necessities for the child in a bag of their own, that’s all Jolene seems to want or need.  Aisha has never seen another woman so unsentimental.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theleaveswant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleaveswant/gifts).



Pooch springs Jolene and the baby from the hospital. They stop at the house for Jolene to pick up her go-bag and a few baby things and they’re out of Springfield and on their way to New Hampshire to check in with Jensen’s family.

Infant, purse, go-bag, and a handful of necessities for the child in a bag of their own, that’s all Jolene seems to want or need. Aisha has never seen another woman so unsentimental.

Jolene watches her husband a lot from the passenger seat. It’s not a happy expression nor an unhappy one. Aisha can’t quite figure what it means but she never’s been able to read women worth a damn. One thing she’d been grateful for about the Losers: they were US Special Forces, no women on the team.

When they get there, Jensen insists they attend his niece’s soccer game before they go home. Aisha bets with Pooch because what the hell else is she gonna do with herself at an eight year old girl’s soccer game?

They leave the game after dragging Jensen off the referee -- Jensen’s temper is apparently not very well leashed when it comes to his niece and the referee seems stupid enough she might trigger Jensen’s reflexes to real violence. So they head to the Jensens’ place and wait while Cougar sings softly and slightly off-key in Spanish in Jensen’s ear.

Jolene kisses Jensen’s sister on the cheek when she arrives, daughter in tow, after Sara finishes punching her brother. She shakes Beth’s hand solemnly, after watching the girl bear Jensen’s fierce hug with long-suffering dignity and pride, and introduces her to little Joseph Porteous. And she fails utterly at an attempt to graciously refuse Sara when she offers Jolene and Pooch her bed when Joseph starts screaming his head off.

While Jolene shushes Joseph, Beth drags Jensen and Cougar off to show her uncles her latest school project, “Mom’s been helping me!” and Sara trails after them, laughing. Jolene sends Pooch out for supplies for the baby after checking him over and determining he’s tired and hungry. And Clay, he takes one look at Jolene, the baby and Aisha and books it for the nearest bar.

Jolene shrugs at Aisha. “Clay’s never been good at dealing with women,” she says, taking off her shirt and unbuttoning her bra. “And now there’s two to deal with.”

She sighs down at Joseph who fusses when she brings him to her breast. “God, I’ve never been any good with kids,” Jolene says.

“Really? You’re taking it pretty well,” Aisha says. She’s not much for children, but Jolene carries the baby like someone who knows how a baby wants to be carried, doesn’t seem fazed when the baby does start screaming for food or attention or a change.

“When I was seventeen and shit-scared out of my mind, I had a baby; didn’t know who the dad was, couldn’t remember that night very well, and I didn’t have anyone at all. Hard to take anything worse than I took that,” Jolene says, shifting around. She winces a little when Joseph finally latches on.

Aisha doesn’t know anyone who talks of trauma like that so matter-of-fact, like it doesn’t matter at all who knows it, like it doesn’t still hurt. Mostly the people Aisha knows don’t talk at all about their personal history.

“What happened?” Aisha asks, curious now despite herself.

“The hell do you think happened?” Jolene asks. “Gave the kid up for adoption and I hope to God daily she got a better family. Lin’s always been after me to track her down. I don’t know what would be worse, though, if she’s happy and doesn’t want to know about her stupid-ass birth-mother or if she’s miserable and hates the woman who gave her up. Or anything in between.”

Aisha sits there and tries to think of anything she might have to say to this woman with a husband and a history she admits to without flinching.

Jolene looks at her, eyes sharp and piercing. “You, you are a mystery, Aisha al-Fadhil,” she says, after a long moment.

Aisha waits, patiently. She can wait in the quiet with the best of them, for her prey to walk itself into her sights, her trap. She can outwait this woman.

Jolene shrugs at her, an acknowledgement. “Clay’s yours,” she says, flatly. “But you even touch any of my boys, I’ll kill you.”

Aisha blinks. “Your boys?”

“Mine,” Jolene says. “Sara’s too, I suppose, Jensen and Cougar at least. She’s a survivor, too, and she has a claim on them. But she can’t make that promise and I can. You’re not the most dangerous woman in this room.”

Aisha snorts lightly. She’s known Jolene for about twenty-four hours and watching her is enough to be able to tell she can take care of herself. That doesn’t make her more dangerous than Aisha.

“Your daddy was a right fucking bastard, yeah?” Jolene says. “But you were his princess.”

Aisha leaves her face blank. She will not give this woman that thinks she knows Aisha the satisfaction of knowing she is right.

“Mine was dead, died when I was six; I was just old enough to know what I was missing," Jolene says. "My momma, she was a junkie after that, never coped with his death. Her boyfriends after that were all shit. They beat her, they beat me, hell, it might’ve been one of them that fathered my kid. I don’t know, she died of an overdose before I even knew I was pregnant.”

Jolene pauses to shift Joseph in her arms. She looks down at him with a faint smile. “When I was seventeen and shit-scared,” she says, veering the conversation back, apparently to her first child, “I gave up that child for adoption, and then I walked myself down to the military recruitment center and enlisted with the Navy like my daddy before me because I could not think of a single damned thing to do with my life, but the Navy had mattered to him. And the Navy was my family after that, ‘til I met Lin.

“I served my country for four years and when I got out, I started working with Doctors without Borders because I didn’t want any part of killing people anymore. As shit as my childhood was, at least it wasn’t cut short. So let me tell you something, Aisha al-Fadhil. You and your daddy are not the most dangerous people I’ve ever tangled with. And if you fuck with my family, I’ll kill you.”

Aisha doubts it, all the same. Trained by one of the better militaries in the world, a shitty childhood and a dangerous vocation and all those things together still don’t necessarily make Jolene a viable threat, not to Aisha. But the woman isn’t posturing, isn’t threatening, just laying out facts, which speaks in her favour. It's possible, anyway.

“And Clay’s not family?” Aisha asks, curious.

Jolene laughs, a worn sound. “Looking after Franklin Clay’s more of a job than any _three_ women would want. After Roque... Roque ruined himself, probably, but if he set the charges then Clay lit them off. He can reap what he has sown. I don’t owe him anything.”

Aisha smiles. “All right,” she says. “I’ll try to keep your boys out of it.”

Joseph fusses crankily and Jolene shifts him over to her other breast. “Word of advice, though,” Jolene says. “For your sake, not his. You kill him -- you will, I know, I don’t doubt that. But when you kill him, it’ll hurt.”

“I don’t even like him,” Aisha says. It’s true. She doesn’t even know him, really. He’s useful, he’s not bad in bed. He killed her father.

She might’ve danced on Fadhil’s grave herself, but.

He killed her father.

Jolene laughs again, this time bright and quicksilver. “Oh, I know, I know. Doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.”

Aisha tries to put on a smile, knows it comes out a snarl, and leaves. She’d rather listen to Cougar’s silence or Jensen’s babble, or a child’s excited chatter, than Jolene’s piercingly cold calm or her ruthless insight.

Jolene is not a warm, maternal figure looking to feed souls; she’s not a survivor clinging to the people she’s found like a drowning man to driftwood; she’s not even a fierce bear protecting her cubs. She’s something more complex than any of those things and absolutely, unsettlingly beautiful.


End file.
